


Oh, The Joy (Spoilers!)

by CharbroilLaFlamme



Category: We Happy Few (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Gen, Guilt, Nursery Rhyme References, References to Depression, Repressed Memories, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 14:02:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15865071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharbroilLaFlamme/pseuds/CharbroilLaFlamme
Summary: A relaxing walk right off the deep end—in which Arthur thinks about trains and Percy.





	Oh, The Joy (Spoilers!)

The crowds were thinner, skies darker, faces drearier—nothing Arthur wasn’t used to.

But he shuffled slowly, thinking. It was all too quiet, nobody could live normally anymore after what had happened.

Siblings left behind, helpless babies—newborns, even—taken to places unknown. Wondering why their parents seemed to have hated them enough to feed them to the train.

Everyone may as well have been dead with how little the people ever spoke.

He was just too dumbstruck to really think much on it. Coming home. Percy wouldn’t be coming home would he?

Arthur could still hear him—his voice penetrating past the grinding, shifting, thudding metal of the hissing train. Hungry for children, hungry for the innocent. Terrible, horrible noises mixed with the worst sound in the world to Arthur.

His brother’s voice, breaking in terror, lost, afraid, looking for Arthur.

The train not only hungered for the young and innocent, but for terrible people.

Arthur kept walking until he was an adult—since attempting to force himself to forget.

He still heard that churning sound that mirrored the turbulence in his stomach. The screeching and the noises had followed him even long after time had done what it does best—elapse, and become irretrievable, slipping away like sand under the waves of the beach.

Of course, Arthur only wondered why his pain seemed to be the only pain he could comprehend—and not Percy’s. No, not Percy’s.

In some bitter way, Arthur knew he did this for himself.

To not have to worry, to not foster his own older brother. He was free, he supposed. From that pressure to stand tall for Percy, protect him... ah, what was he thinking?

He didn’t feel that at all... he hoped.

Arthur was commuting to work, his heart low as ever.

Looming in his mind was the sounds of his own betrayal. Nary a silent moment. He almost kind of hated himself, that he could think so coarsely of his own brother.

He needed him most in that moment—and Arthur _spurned_ him.

He moved along an overpass, that led to the water below, wondering in passing how it would feel to fall from it. And not die.

Maybe just... get swept away somewhere else, far away to other shores.

But not die, Arthur knew there was still _something_ to live for. He just wasn’t sure what.

The overwhelming Joy in his system had done well to force this feeling on him. Things were starting to slip through the cracks and being replaced by saccharine filler.

Forced ignorance toward this idea that there was something more to their world—truths and outside wonders they had yet to see that could make him happier than the Village _ever_ could. He wanted to escape.

Was Arthur broken for wanting that? To get away from the world chosen for them, made for them—just so they could selfishly ignore what they were complicit to.

He couldn’t stop himself from wanting to choke up on the overpass, leaning on the edge to look at the watery, whirling precipice below.

The Joy called to him from his inner jacket pocket, but he had to stop and focus for a while to gather himself.

He had no strength to greet the passing pedestrians. No motivation to say hello—the pit of his stomach boiled with anger, he felt empty. But that was no excuse for rebuffing others.

He managed the best smile he could under the mask at those who passed by, then uttered a cheery greeting, the catchphrase of every faker: “ _Lovely day for it!_ ”

None the wiser, they moved on.

Arthur sighed, letting his heart hurt. He wanted to feel nothing. But he unconsciously wouldn’t let that happen.

The children began singing, all manners of rhymes to get the time moving faster.

_London Bridge’s wheels going round and round, the fair lady rowing her boat and the little stars twinkling above the house that Jack built._

The train whistle bellowed from the station.

And Arthur felt the train’s wheels trample him again.


End file.
